Doctor Zhivago (novel)
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| Author | Boris Pasternak |
|---|---|
| Original title | Доктор Живаго |
| Country | U.S.S.R. |
| Language | Russian |
| Genre(s) | Historical, Romantic novel |
| Publisher | Feltrinelli (first edition), Pantheon Books |
| Released | 1957 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 592 (Pantheon) |
| ISBN | NA (Feltrinelli) & ISBN 0-679-77438-6 (Pantheon) |
Doctor Zhivago (Russian: Доктор Живаго) is a 20th century novel by Boris Pasternak. The novel is named after its protagonist, Yuri Zhivago, a medical doctor and poet. The word zhivago shares a root with the Russian word for life (жизнь), one of the major themes of the novel. It tells the story of a man torn between two women, set primarily against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution of 1917. More deeply, the novel discusses the plight of a man as his life is slowly destroyed by the violence of the revolution. The book was made into a film by David Lean in 1965 and has also been adapted numerous times for television, most recently as a miniseries for Russian TV in 2005.
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[edit] Foreground
Although it contains passages written in the 1910s and 1920s, Doctor Zhivago was not completed until 1956. It was submitted for publication to the journal Noviy mir, but was rejected due to Pasternak's difficult relationship with the Soviet government. In 1957 publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli smuggled the manuscript out of the Soviet Union and published the book in Russian in Milan by Feltrinelli edition. The following year, it appeared in Italian and English translations, and these publications were partly responsible for the fact that the author was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958. The book was finally published in the Soviet Union in 1988, ironically in the pages of Noviy mir, although earlier samizdat editions also exist.
[edit] Plot summary
Yuri Zhivago is sensitive and poetic nearly to the point of mysticism. In medical school, one of his professors reminds him that bacteria may be beautiful under the microscope, but does ugly things to people.
Zhivago's idealism and principles stand in brutal contrast to the horrors of World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the subsequent Russian Civil War. A large theme of the book is how the mysticism of things and idealism is destroyed by both the Bolsheviks, Rebels and the white army. Yuri must witness cannibalism, dismemberment, and other horrors suffered by the innocent civilian population during the turmoil. Even the love of his life, Lara (whose full name is Larissa Feodorovna), is taken from him.
He ponders on how the war can turn the whole world senseless, and make a previously reasonable group of people destroy each other with no regard for life. His journey through Russia has an epic feeling because of his travelling through a world which is in such striking contrast to himself, relatively uncorrupted by the violence, and to his desire to find a place away from it all, which drives him across the Arctic Siberia of Russia, and eventually back down to Moscow. Pasternak gives subtle criticism on the soviet ideology: he disagrees with the idea of "building a new man", which is against nature. This fits in the story's theme of life.
Pasternak's description of the singer Kubarikha in the chapter "Iced Rowanberries" is almost identical to Sofia Satina's (sister-in-law / cousin of Sergei Rachmaninov) description of gypsy singer Nadezhda Plevitskaya (1884-1940). Since Rachmaninov was a friend of the Pasternak family, and Plevitskaya a friend of Rachmaninov, Plevitskaya was probably Pasternak's "mind image" when he wrote the chapter; something which also shows how Pasternak had roots in music.
[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
Doctor Zhivago has been adapted for film and stage multiple times.
- The most famous by far is the 1965 adaptation by David Lean, starring Omar Sharif and Julie Christie. The film was a huge box-office hit and won several Oscars but was panned by critics; now, however, it is widely considered to be a classic film. The film is faithful to the book in a general sense, with no significant deviations from the general storyline; however, the depictions of several characters and events are noticeably different.
- Doctor Zhivago is also a mini-series with Hans Matheson, Keira Knightley, and Sam Neill, first appearing on the British ITV network in November 2002, and Masterpiece Theatre in the United States in November 2003.
- An eleven-part Russian mini-series was released in 2006.
- A made-for-cable film remake had been announced in 2002, which would have had Joseph Fiennes as Zhivago and Jeremy Irons as Komarovsky, but was ultimately scrapped. It is unclear whether this evolved into the Masterpiece Theatre production or was an entirely different version altogether. [1]
- The first film version of Zhivago was actually a made-for-TV version produced in Brazil in 1959, which is currently unavailable. [2]
- Zhivago, a musical adaptation of the story, features music by Lucy Simon ("The Secret Garden"), a book by Michael Weller ("Hair," "Ragtime" screenplays), and lyrics by Michael Korie ("Doll" and the "Harvey Milk" opera libretto) and Amy Powers ("Lizzie Borden" and songs for "Sunset Boulevard"). It was a direct adaptation of Pasternak's novel rather than Lean's film. It made its debut at the La Jolla Playhouse in 2005 as a Page-To-Stage workshop, and then in a main-stage production which opened in May 2006. A Broadway debut is planned sometime in 2007.
- A new musical called "Doktor Zhivago" is to be premiered in the Urals city of Perm' on March 22 2007, and to remain in the repertoire of Perm' Musical Theatre throughout the 50th Anniversary year. Perm' claims many links with the novel since Pasternak was evacuated there during WW2. Perm' features in the novel under the name "Yuriatin" (which is a fictional city invented by Pasternak for the book) and many locations for events in the book can be accurately traced in Perm', since Pasternak left the street-names mostly unchanged. For example, the Public Reading-Room in which Yuri and Larissa have their chance meeting in "Yuriatin" is exactly where the book places it in contemporary Perm'.
[edit] External links
- Homegrown Doctor Zhivago to Debut on Russian Television
- How the CIA won Zhivago a Nobel
- "The 'Doctor Zhivago' caper" (editorial), The Boston Globe, February 20, 2007.
